-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- In February 2009 , President Barack Obama gave this stern warning to bailed-out banks :

`` You are not going to be able to give out these big bonuses until you 've paid taxpayers back , '' Obama said at a town hall meeting . `` You ca n't get corporate jets , you ca n't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers ' dime . ''

He should have added : '' ... unless you work for the federal government . ''

Twenty months later , as we all now know , a government agency called the General Services Administration rolled into Vegas on $ 822,000 worth of taxpayers ' dimes so that 300 federal employees could enjoy a luxury spa , a clown show and a mind-reader , among other `` over the top '' entertainments at a regional training conference .

The revelation , unearthed by an internal inspector general , has resulted in two senior-level firings and the resignation of GSA chief Martha Johnson , while triggering the usual amount of political japery in Washington . But it 's worth lingering on the contrast between this incident and Obama 's original bank target .

The bailed-out bank that had been planning to send its most valuable employees to Vegas -- as it had been doing for years -- was Wells Fargo . One fact largely overlooked in the national shaming campaign that proved effective enough to derail the trip was that Wells Fargo did n't want the bailout . Or at least said it did n't when then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson summoned the nation 's top nine private bankers to Washington on October 13 , 2008 .

Here 's how Time magazine described the scene : '' -LSB- T -RSB- he nine bank bosses , assembled in the Treasury 's imposing boardroom , were each handed a piece of paper with the terms : $ 25 billion of preferred shares each from Citigroup , JPMorgan Chase , Wells Fargo and Bank of America . In return for the capital , the U.S. would collect a 5 % dividend in the first five years . Although Wells Fargo chairman Richard Kovacevich resisted , Paulson gave the bankers no choice . ''

Newsweek 's Michael Hirsh put it even more explicitly , and presciently : `` Richard Kovacevich had a point . Why should his company , Wells Fargo , sign its freedom -LRB- and his compensation -RRB- away to the U.S. Treasury when , unlike many other banks , it had n't overloaded itself with risky , mortgage-backed securities ? The Wells Fargo chairman eventually agreed Monday to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson 's capital injection plan -- it was , frankly , an offer he could n't refuse -- but Kovacevich 's objections still resonate . Amid the continuing market turmoil , there is a sense that all of us are being asked to assume collective guilt for the large , but still identifiable , group of rogues and villains who got us into this mess . And then we 're supposed to just forget about it . ''

A funny thing about collective shame -- we are happy to administer it on CEOs who get their arms twisted by the feds , yet we shy away from applying it to one of the only truly collective entities we have : taxpayer-funded government .

We love to bash Goldman Sachs for trading exotic mortgage-backed derivatives , but we are far less likely to even point out that the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were trailblazers on the derivatives-trading fronts .

It should n't be surprising in this climate that federal employees would assume they get to play under different ethical rules and public scrutiny than fat-cat bankers . After all , Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin , D-Illinois , said last month that discretionary spending has been cut `` to the limit , '' and Obama just this week thundered that the House GOP 's recently proposed budget -- which , by the way , increases spending from $ 3.5 trillion to $ 4.9 trillion over the next decade -- amounts to `` social Darwinism '' that deliberately guts the middle class .

And let 's not forget what the GSA does : As The New York Times puts it , the agency is `` essentially the government 's personal shopper for big-ticket items , like buying and leasing buildings and cars . '' These are precisely the people tasked with making sure taxpayer dollars are spent most wisely .

We have a federal government on autopilot , borrowing 40 cents on every dollar , after a decade-plus bipartisan spending binge that has doubled the budget in nominal terms . Washington is a boomtown , gentrifying rapidly as the rest of the country eagerly awaits the appearance of green shoots .

The surprise is n't that a federal agency went wild , or even that it got caught . What remains a genuine stumper is that the rest of the country has n't quite figured out that the real Sin City has relocated 2,500 miles east .

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Matt Welch .

@highlight

Matt Welch says Obama told bailed-out banks in 2009 to curb corporate junket spending

@highlight

He says $ 822,000 GSA junket shows our lecturing government guilty of same thing

@highlight

He says we like to shame bankers even as Washington wastes , overspends

@highlight

Welch : Vegas junket not as surprising as Americans not seeing real Sin City is D.C.